The Spectator

Barometer | 10 September 2015

Old bags The government announced details of a compulsory 5p charge for single-use plastic bags in shops. Plastic bags have only been around since 1960, when they were first produced by the Swedish firm Akerlund and Rausing, later to give the world the Tetrapak. The first store to use them was Strom, a shoe-shop chain

Portrait of the week | 10 September 2015

Home David Cameron, the Prime Minister, told Parliament that he had authorised the killing, on 21 August, by means of an RAF drone, of a British citizen near Raqqa in Syria, Cardiff-born Reyaad Khan, 21, an adherent of the Islamic State. Ruhul Amin, from Aberdeen, also an Islamic State activist, whose killing had not been

The fog of law

Not even Jeremy Corbyn lamented the death of Reyaad Khan, who was killed by an RAF drone in Syria after joining the Islamic State. He was a straight-A student from Cardiff who had the freedom to do anything with his life, but chose to turn his back on Britain and join a band of Islamofascists.

A Russian revolution

From ‘The situation in Russia’, The Spectator, 11 September 1915: A new Russia has been arising within the old while the war has been going on. We have heard little of it, but we believe that the changes are deep and wide. A people cannot fight for liberty and justice without discovering that those ideas daily react upon

A British ‘kill list’ does exist. We used it in Afghanistan

The following article is by an ex-serviceman who served in Afghanistan. They’re making a list, they’re checking it twice – and Number 10 will know whether you’ve been naughty or nice. And if you’ve been very naughty, you’d better watch out for a metallic glint in the sky. Britain doesn’t have anything called a ‘kill list’,